


Smoke and Frost

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Blood-Smoke Series - Tanya Huff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:53:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winter always comes, even in Vancouver.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke and Frost

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to L  & W, my betas. Thanks to the organizers for another chance to make myself go crazy.
> 
> Written for delurker

 

 

The company Christmas party, CB Barnes style: Amy texted them all on the morning of December 15th, and those who were available over hiatus showed up at the Flota in Chinatown for a really good meal for 10. With everybody paying their own way, of course. Amy brought homemade baking, which was neither inedible nor decorated with skulls and so had to be Jack's baking, but he was letting her take the credit and no one spoiled it for either of them.

Tony sat at the big round table next to Lee, letting his knee brush against Lee's every once in a while, an incidental touch with intent for later. Lee eventually worked a hand under the tablecloth, linking his fingers loosely with Tony's. Amy noticed, but didn't say a word, just waved the waiter over for more jasmine tea.

"I hear the fans have been going crazy on the internet about Mason's appearance at Shadowcon. There's rumours he slept with fans," Amy said, when the crowd had thinned down to her and Jack and Lee and Tony.

Lee rolled his eyes. "Jesus. Please tell me they were all adults? The last thing we need is a statutory rape charge. CB'd kill him."

"Cool," said Amy. "But not before he had Mason turn _you_ , make you a vampire so the show could go on!"

Tony pictured Lee as the lead vampire. Dovetailing it with his ... other ... experiences in that arena, he had to admit it had a slightly kinky sort of appeal. _Down, Tony_. He smirked. "We'd do way better in our slot, if that happened," he said. "Listen, I've got to be heading home. I'm working on the set tomorrow as a PA for "Without You". It's some sort of cheesy romance for W, and they're leasing the soundstage out from CB."

"And I'm his ride," Lee said, and did not blush when Jack snorted audibly. "You?" Lee said, pointing, "are nothing like the Mountie on TV."

"He licks things just fine, thanks," Amy said, and Jack went red and Lee went red and Tony just rolled his eyes because it was _Amy_ , what the fuck did they expect?

As soon as they hit the outside air their breath turned vapour-white and shit, it was snowing again. "What the fuck? I left Toronto to leave the weather. What the hell is up with this? Snowstorms and cold snaps and days of ice and rain and windstorms? This was not in the brochure!"

Lee shrugged more deeply into his lined leather jacket. "We used to get stuff like this when I was a kid, but not this bad," he said. "Oh, great," and they all followed his gaze to the corner, where an impossibly skinny guy was just picking up speed and heading right for them.

It wasn't totally unexpected, since Chinatown in Vancouver backed ass-end onto the roughest part of the city: flophouse hotels, junkies shooting up in doorways and people pissing, fucking and killing themselves slowly in the alleys between the decaying old brick buildings. It wasn't uncommon for the two communities to overlap.

But this guy was ... fuck. Messed up, all brittle and thin and revved up so high it was a wonder his heart hadn't burst. Tony watched as the tweaker made his way up to them, talking in staccato gasps and hiccups of noise. "Man. I'm glad that my wild days were before crank hit the streets," Tony said finally, his voice sounding flat and funny to his own ears. Thank God for Victory, he thought, remembering her as she had been, something subtly different from what she was now.

"Vampire, vampire!" the guy shrieked. "She's sucking us all dry, you gotta do something, sucking us with a straw!"

It took Tony a minute to realize everyone was staring at him. "What?"

Amy made a shooing motion, making the skulls on her gloves wink at him. "Aren't you going to go check it out?"

"He's _cranked_ ," Tony said. "Jacked. Lit. Gurped. Ring Dang Doo. _Fucked up_!"

The tweaker looked hurt. "No shit, man, but I ain't stupid. There's a fucking _vampire_ or something out there. She just ate Bobby Kelly!"

Tony sighed, his breath curling up around his head like dragon smoke. "Okay, sure. Show us."

@@@

Tony knelt down beside the corpse, trying not to think about what he was kneeling _in_ and was pleasantly surprised that the body didn't stink. He tried to turn its head to look for punctures or tearing, but ... "Well, the good news is, this isn't guy didn't die by vampire, should they exist." He looked up, only to find Lee hovering protectively close and Jack at his shoulder. "He's frozen. Solid."

"Solid?" Amy said. "Cool." She winced at her own pun. "Sorry."

"So, what do you think did it?" Jack asked, because he still seemed to think Tony was his very own pocket dictionary of the paranormal.

"The White Lady," the tweaker said from the mouth of the alley. Tony didn't think he was talking about heroin.

@@@

Jack was waiting for him when he got off set the next day, leaning against one of the rustier tin-shed outbuildings. "Frozen through and through," Jack said. "And not our first one, it seems. We had three homeless die in the cold snap, but they must have taken long enough to find that they'd mostly thawed again. The only reason the VPD knows otherwise is that the coroner found ice crystals in the damn heart tissue."

"You know they're not gonna let you create an X-Files division, right?" Tony said, sliding tiredly behind the wheel of his car. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"Go looking. Call your friend, Henry. He's smart. Do anything," Jack said, impossibly, annoyingly sincere. "We've got four guys dead that we know of, and yeah, I know it's the rough part of town and they were all street people, but honestly? They're still _people_. They don't deserve to be something's prey," Jack said, and there was something in his voice or his face that pinged something in Tony, hard. Right at that minute, he reminded Tony a hell of a lot of Vicky, the first time she'd bought him coffee and stuffed him full of waffles and bacon.

Tony leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, sighed. "Okay. Okay. I'll do what I can, okay? Call you tomorrow if I figure anything out."

@@@

Lee was waiting for him when he got home. "Did we have a date? Did I forget a date?" Tony said, after Lee had kissed him "hello" and a bit into "hey, how are _you_ doing?"

"Nope. You have cable internet, I don't, and I wanted to check something out," Lee said. "I went looking for the White Lady."

Okay. Yeah. "Anything like looking for the White Rabbit?" Tony asked.

Lee smacked him upside the head. "Nothing like. It was just ringing a bell, so I went trolling through the Darkest Night journals on LJ to get fanfiction links."

"You read fanfiction?" Tony blinked. The one time he'd stumbled across the stuff it had been... Well. It had made Henry's bodice rippers look like Margaret Atwood by comparison.

Lee pinked up around the ears. "Uh. Some of it's sort of ... hot. Some of the ones with Lee and Detective Perrault? Read like gay porn. Anyway. I knew I'd seen the reference to a "White Lady" before, and freezing, and it took me all afternoon, but I found the damn story." He seemed pretty pleased with himself.

Tony sighed, closed his eyes. "Listen. I'm going to shower, because I'm ripe. Jenissa Adler threatens pneumonia if they keep it under thirty degrees on set, probably because she has less body fat than a wishbone, and me? I spent the day sweating and getting her ice water to keep her "hydrated." Then we'll eat your dinner, because I smell really good red sauce. And then I'll look, okay?"

Tony was halfway through the shower when he felt a blast of cool air, and then Lee was pressed up against his back.

"Hi," said Lee, his hand running down Tony's sternum, over his abs to his rapidly hardening cock. "I'm baking the spaghetti. I figure we've got a good half hour."

Tony turned, and the sight of Lee, slick and shining with water and want made his mouth dry out, took all his words away, like he was still the PA mooning after the second lead. He framed Lee's face in his hands, looked long and hard at him. "I can work with that," he said, finally, and then he kissed him.

@@@

Mellowed out by sex, spaghetti and red wine, Tony read the fanfic Lee had spent his Saturday afternoon searching for. It was pretty good, better than the other time he'd wandered into fandom. And the White Lady was there, all right, only she was called the Snow Wife. She had been a Japanese demon, a nature spirit who'd taken mortal form to marry a handsome young man she'd once spared, only to leave him and their ten children when he'd broken his vow not to speak of the demon. Suddenly she had appeared in Raymond Dark's city preying on the citizens, turning the winter bitterly cold. Raymond had hunted down her descendents, made them lay her to rest. Tony snorted. It was never that easy.

"And you think _this_ is what we're dealing with?" Tony asked, looking up from his computer screen. "Because that's a hell of a leap from a junkie screaming about a "White Lady", you know that, right?" But Lee was looking at him steadily. "Okay, yeah. There are points in common," he agreed finally. "I guess it's time I rolled the bones, huh?"

"Or called Henry," Lee said. "He knows about this sort of stuff, right?"

"You're pretty eager for me to call my ex," Tony said, trying for funny and missing by, oh, a light-year.

"He's not your ex," Lee said, surprisingly okay-sounding. "I figure that he'll never be your ex, not entirely. But you're done that part of your relationship, it's different now."

Tony wanted to kiss him so damn bad, because he was a _good_ guy. Such a fucking good guy. "I'll call Henry," Tony agreed.

@@@

Henry already knew, and he was pissed. "It's hunting in my territory," and his voice was just edging into Prince of Darkness, just enough that Tony felt twitchy and his cock hardened just at the tone.

"Lee thinks it's a Japanese demon," Tony said. "Or it could be, something like, anyway. And didn't Japantown used to butt up against Chinatown, too?"

"I'll be there in an hour, after ... dinner," Henry said, and hung up. Tony sighed, tucked his cell away.

"He'll be here in an hour," he said.

"Yay," said Lee. "I'm going to get more wine. You?"

"I'm going to get Arra's laptop and play cards." Tony felt something throb behind his left eye. If he was lucky, it was only a _small_ aneurysm.

@@@

The whole Spider Solitaire thing didn't work for him like it had for Arra, but for some reason, poker seemed to be doing the trick. Texas Hold'em, anyway. The patterns of the cards coming into play made sense, somehow. Tony stared at the screen until he was cross-eyed, because if he viewed the four hands as the quarters, and the cards in each quarter meant ... he closed his eyes, touched his fingers to the thin-ply of his computer desk, the Ikea one he and Lee had put together a few weeks ago. Wood in the desk, and metal, and something that tasted on the back of his tongue like love. It anchored him and he reached out, looking for _cold_.

He felt his body snap-lock and become the springboard to his will, arrowing him eastwards, to the cold that made him burn, that stole the not-breath from his not-lungs. She stood in the shadows, halfway into the stone, her pale gaze fierce and predatory, watching. He was soundless, motionless but still her hunting gaze found him, skewered him, cut him into two. " _Mahoutsukai_ ," she hissed, her voice fierce, like the keen of a high wind. Tony felt her reach into him, felt fingers like talons hook in, pulling him thin and tenuous until suddenly he felt a strong pull in the other direction, tugging him backwards, again and again.

He opened his eyes to find himself half in Lee's lap, and Henry fingering his shredded sweatshirt. "I take it you found her," he said, as mildly as Henry could, when there was a demon hunting his grounds, trying to take chunks out of his pet human.

"She's pretty pissed," Tony said, startled to find his throat thick and raspy. "And dangerous." He stared up at the ceiling, which, despite best intentions, was still beige. He closed his eyes, remembered the white burn of her glare, then let it go and sank instead into the warmth of Lee's thigh. "I think we need to do a little more research." He opened his eyes again, looked up into the Henry's hooded gaze. "Unless you're an expert on Japanese nature demons as well?"

Henry shook his head slowly. "No. Research is probably necessary. I suggest you share out responsibilities, though, because I do not think she will content herself with the homeless and the lost for long, and the winter has a long ways to go yet. I will go ... see what I can see, in the meanwhile." He nodded to Lee briefly, and then was out the door almost impossibly fast.

"When did I sign on for this?" Tony asked, not moving from Lee's lap.

"I think it was your karma," Lee said. "You probably _really_ pissed someone off in your last life. Do you want coffee, wine or beer?"

"I want beer," Tony said, sitting up. "I'll settle for coffee, and a new shirt. And then we call Amy and Jack and Zev and maybe ... see what we can turn up."

)0(

By three a.m. Zev was on the floor with his laptop, Amy and Jack had two laptops set up at the junker table and chairs Tony had in the corner he'd made his "dining room" and Lee was asleep in Tony's bed only because Tony and Jack had sort of half-carried, half-marched him in there. Between them they'd found every reference to the Snow Wife they could. Yuki-onna, the Winter Spirit. Demon. Ghost. Vampire. And ...

"Whoa. Succubus tendencies," Amy said. "She drains them dry through sex." She rapped her aquamarine fingernails against the battered tabletop. "Kinky."

"Quite literally the killing winter," Zev offered. "Although every once in a while she lets one go." He shut down the folders he had opened, began powering down the laptop. "I still don't see how this'll help us, though."

"Us?" Tony asked, and God, but he needed a better vacuum, because there was sock lint everywhere. He ran his thumb over the gold loop in his eyebrow.

"Us," Jack said.

"We aren't the Scooby Gang, you all know that, right?" Tony said. "Not the original or the Buffy one." He sighed. "Knowledge gives me a place to start. I know she's Japanese, I know her origins, and I know her stories. Something's gotta be in there. Something that'll let me ... why the fuck is she in the alleys, not the mountains? Why isn't she sucking dry all those Grouse grinders?" He flopped back against his couch.

"Why is she in that part of town?" Lee said muzzily from the doorway of the bedroom. "You said it, didn't you? That Japantown used to be around there."

"And?" Amy said, arms crossed, eyebrow up. "You going somewhere with this?"

Lee scratched the back of his head. "She married that Minokichi guy, right? Had ten kids?"

Jack's eyes widened. "Shit."

"You think a grandchild of hers is part of this? Setting her on the city, in vengeance for what? The forties?" Zev asked. "I mean, normally I'd say that's sort of far-out there, but ... it's been weirder than that, so hey, who'm I to say?"

"It could be a lot simpler than that," Lee said finally. "I mean, what if she came over here with her descendents, and something just ... woke her up? The changes in the weather, or rebuilding in the downtown core? Chinatown has buildings preserved for heritage, but not Japantown, not necessarily."

"Maybe ... I need to go ask her," Tony said. Lee looked at his chest, and Tony could feel the cold-burn of her earlier swipe. "Yeah, I know. But how many options are there? And maybe I can ... sort of shove her back into whatever bottle she came from."

"You think you can do that?" Zev asked sceptically. Tony shrugged.

"I can try," he said. "That's pretty much what this whole thing is about, trial and error." Mostly error, so far, but he'd gotten enough right that he was still breathing, so that had to mean something, right?

Right?

)0(

This time it was Henry waiting for Tony outside the studio, although he seemed to be coming from the end with CB's offices, and ... ewwww.

He so did not want to think about that.

Henry's dark auburn hair gleamed in the yellowish streetlights, and his face was half-hid in shadow. "What've I told you about wearing that shade of red?" Tony said.

"Not to," Henry agreed. "She's taken more than just the ones Constable Elson knows of. Some have simply not had families to ask after them, or have had bodies appear. But her ... spoor lingers in the places they were last scene. She leaves a mark, quite unlike anything else I've ever known."

"Wanna buy me dinner at The Boss Bakery?" Tony said. "It's supposed to snow tonight."

Henry nodded. "You'll forgive me if I don't join you in your meal."

"This once," Tony said, and Henry climbed into the passenger seat of Tony's car without argument. They didn't talk about what was to come, what they were going to try and do, and that was something new because it used to be Henry trying to protect him and this was ... Henry treating him as an equal, or as close to an equal as he did anyone. Tony suspected it was being a Royal Bastard as much as being a vampire that gave Henry the whole noblesse oblige crap, though, which was sort of funny and almost charming in a world where pop stars had more clout than kings.

@@@

Snow was falling thick and wet by the time they left the restaurant and started walking a slow circuit around the neighbourhoods. Sometimes junkies and hookers started to head over but it only took a glance from Henry to stop them in their tracks and start them skittering backwards. About forty minutes in, Tony felt ... something, a prickling at the hairs on the back of his neck, a cold finger down his spine. He turned his head to say something but Henry had already caught wind of her. Henry led and Tony followed him to a narrow alley between two old brick buildings on Gore. As soon as they turned into the dark mouth of the narrow breezeway, a sharp, piercing cold bit into Tony's bones, made them ache.

A nimbus of light surrounded her, like the corona around a streetlamp in the snow, and they watched as she curved over the bundled-up form of a homeless man who could have otherwise been mistaken for a pile of rags. She was naked, ice-white save for her long dark hair, the thatch of dark hair between her thighs and the impossible red of her parted lips. A fine, silvery mist rose up from the bundle of blankets, and she swallowed it down, eyes closed in concentration.

Without thinking, Tony balled his fist, raised it up, thought _push_ and it was like licking a fucking flagpole in winter but she staggered back so he pushed again.

" _Mahoutsukai_ ," she howled, furiously, her voice rising with the growing wind, merging into it.

"Sashitomeru!" Henry's voice was a roar in Tony's ear, the words strange and alien in Henry's mouth, and from the way she looked at him he'd probably gotten the grammar wrong, but the point had been made.

" _Kyuuketsuki_ ," she said, measuring the word out on her tongue. "Vampire?" she sounded it slowly. "And wizard." Her gaze flicked up to encompass Tony.

"You speak English?" Tony asked and she snorted.

"I swallowed their dreams, their hopes, and yes, their words. It is an ugly tongue, without subtly, the language of barbarians." She was so very pale, like moonlight. "Why have you woken me to this? In this land where my children's children have been dishonoured and repudiated? Why is this place that was _ours_ given over to the offal, the filthiest of your hakujin filth?"

"Fuck you, lady. They're still people, not just your dinner," Tony said, raising his fist again. "And we were wondering about you ourselves. Why the hell are you here?"

"Because the door opened to the Ancestors, and Winter, pale, thin thing that it is, was waiting for me, so I came," she replied. "And perhaps I shall stay, and sweep clean your streets, make it fit for my children to return?"

"You cannot hunt in my city," Henry said, all Prince of Darkness, but it meant less than nothing to her. She raised a perfect dark brow contemptuously.

"I am older than you could dream of being. I am Winter." She closed her eyes, raised her arms and became a fine, silver mist that hovered and then disappeared.

Tony leaned against the brick wall. "Well. That went well." He turned, but Henry was nowhere to be found. Tony sighed. "Yeah, really fucking well."

@@@

The thing about really good sex, Tony had found, the kind where you were holding onto the corners of the bed and sweat was running into your eyes and your whole body was wide open and humming?

Was that was like some universal signal that someone should fucking _phone_ him.

"Ignore it, " Tony gasped and Lee did, for three, four, a dozen more thrusts, his hand working Tony's cock hard and unrelentingly until Tony grunted, shot and sighed. He managed to keep to his knees as Lee finished, rhythm growing stuttered and ragged and then the long, slow mewl of sound that meant he, too, was coming.

Tony winced slightly at the separation of their bodies, rolled over to watch Lee strip the condom off and dispose of it in a tissue. He then reached out, long and lean and just ... fucking gorgeous, to fish Tony's cell out of his pants' pocket.

"You have voicemail," Lee said, laying down beside him.

"You are killing my buzz, here," Tony said, but he took the phone even as Lee mouthed a wet kiss to the side of his neck.

"You taste like salt," Lee murmured even as Tony pulled up his voicemail, and there was Amy, so loud that Lee could hear her, too.

"For God's sake stop fucking and call me back," she said and then, "Well, not in the middle or anything. But call me back!" Lee's kiss turned into laughter, tickling Tony.

"I think you'd better call her back. It sounds like she's going to pop a vein," Lee said finally, when he'd quieted down. Tony turned and looked at him, at the way Lee was looking at him: fondly, with understanding. Still kind of longingly. "Go on. Seriously. I figured out that you're sort of always on duty, and while I'd like to be selfish and have a hissy fit over this ... I sort of feel better knowing that you care enough to not just say "fuck it", okay?"

Tony leaned in, kissed his shoulder, then called Amy with speed dial. Amy who was, apparently, looming over her phone like a cartoon vulture. "You called?"

"You were fucking, right?" Amy said.

Tony closed his eyes. "And this is me, hanging up," he said.

"No, no, don't! Listen, do you have the computer on?" Lee rolled his eyes, then slid out of bed and wandered out into the living room, still naked. Tony took a long look at his ass, and an even longer look at the view when Lee came back in with the laptop. "Got it? Google the Vancouver Museum."

Tony booted the computer up and as soon as everything loaded googled the museum. "Yeah?"

"Look under the exhibits section, features. They've put together a display on the Canadian Japanese, Issei and Nisei and the internment camps. They've got all sorts of household items that were seized from Japanese Canadians ... and look at the photo, top left!"

Tony squinted. Wood and brass cupboard, an inside with shelves. Big deal. "An abutsudan. Which is what?"

"The shrine for the ancestors!" Amy crowed. "That's how she got over here! She came with her descendents, her spirit drawn in with the abutsudan!"

 _The door to the Ancestors._ Well. Fuck.

"Well, fuck," Lee said.

@@@

It was snowing hard when they met the next night in front of the Vancouver Museum. "You've got the supplies?" Tony asked Amy, who held up two cloth grocery bags packed full to overflowing. She was wearing a little kimono-wrap dress under a battered army jacket, and had done her hair up in chopsticks for the occasion, her version of formal.

Zev held up a third bag, "And I got what you asked for, thank-you very much. Now my rabbi thinks I'm crazy."

He turned to Jack. "You've got the cops covered if they show up?" he asked, handing him the many, many forged sheets indicating that they'd been approved for a night shoot in the museum.

Jack gave him a thumbs up. "Security detail, picking up a few bucks, cheesy horror film for cable."

He glanced upward, briefly, to the observatory, and reached out to what he could not see but knew was there all the same. Henry had the perimeters, watching for interlopers and for Yuki-onna as well.

And Lee. He turned to Lee. "I'm going to use a lot of power. You don't have to do this, you know that?"

Lee shrugged. "You need an anchor. I ... can be an anchor."

"Okay, then." Tony concentrated, traced the lines of energy running though the doors and rooms, bent them, made a hole, then pushed the doors open. "Let's go."

"You're getting good at that," Amy whispered.

"That's because he loses his keys all over the apartment," Lee whispered back. "He'd never be able to leave the house if he hadn't figured that one out."

Tony paused by the big admissions desk, flipped Lee the bird, then returned his focus to find the ... cold. God. Fuck. Shit. Licking the flagpole, ice-cream headache, Slurpee _motherfucking_ brain freeze. "It's thataway," Tony said, rubbing between his eyes. "She's all over the place in there."

Sure enough the shrine was there, the abutsudan, with the dishes and vases all in place. Amy quickly put down her bags and started rooting through them, pulling out mandarins and paper lanterns and long incense wands. With Zev's help she started setting up the shrine to match the photo they'd printed off the internet.

Tony left them to it and focused on his task. He pulled out the old zippo he'd managed to hang on to all these years and pulled the fire from the heart of it, then conjured small, empty balls of air and water, vapour thin, to hold the fire. He passed each completed globe off to Lee, who hung them in the air in evenly space intervals, marking the way to the shrine as mukaebi fires had in generations past.

It took them half an hour to finish, and then they sat down to wait.

"I should've brought my PSP," Amy groused after the first hour had passed.

"Hey, you wanted in on this," Tony said. "Stop bitching." He leaned his shoulder against Lee, soaking up his warmth, pulling a shard of it deep inside himself.

"Yeah, but it's usually much more exciting," Amy insisted. "Hellfire and guts and blood. I'm used to the adrenaline high," she said.

Tony started to say something back but then the brain freeze was back, like an ice pick through his brain. He scrambled to his feet and watched the pale, silver mist slide in, then rise up in a single column.

Yuki-onna wore white robes this time, perhaps in respect of the shrine. "It's been many years since anyone laid fruit and flowers on this altar," she said softly. "But you are not of my children. You have no claim over me. You are nothing to me."

"Then why did you come?" Tony challenged her. "If we're nothing, then why come?"

She smiled at him, but there was sadness in her pale gaze. "Because I was curious, Wizard. Because I am lonely. Because this amused me." She turned to look at Lee. "You might have been one I'd have spared. You have spring in your eyes, and I have never known spring except in the gaze of young men." She turned back to Tony. "I might have spared you, as well, for you have been marked by the winter already." She touched him, a scar on the back his shoulder that no one else knew the story of, not now that his dad was dead and gone. The cold of her fingers burned, marked him, covering the scar. Her fingers dug in and the pain bit in deep enough to make Tony hiss between his teeth, but he didn't drop her gaze.

"But you are still barbarians, savages, and I am still Winter. I will eat your offerings , I will drink your wine and for this tribute I will spare you, for now. Perhaps for years. But I will come for you, eventually. Winter always does." The spheres that had lit her way froze, shattered, and the small fires sputtered out on the cold tile floor.

She let him go then and walked to the abutsudan, then plucked an orange from the heaped dish. She rolled it gently between her palms, then lifted it to her face and breathed in the tang of it before pulling the delicate skin loose with a sharp finger. A flash of something caught her eye, and she leaned in, looked into a mirror that caught the red glow of the incense, the gleaming of her face. "What is this?" and Tony gripped Lee's sweater, right over his heart, anchored himself in the heat, the flesh ... the love ... and raised his other fist and pushed hard, hard as a powershot but without the pyrotechnics.

It burned, worse even than before, but she shuddered, stumbled back and fell and Tony kept pushing, shoving, using everything he had, securely anchored in Lee. Yuki-onna howled, and high winds rose up around the building. Outside they could here the snap of downed power lines and breaking trees and the whole building shook with the violence of the sudden winter storm.

It seemed to stretch out forever, and Tony's body ached with the effort, all his muscles knotted and twisted with strain. He felt the cold in every bone he'd ever broken, and these days he had a lot of them. He felt hollowed out, pushing her in against her will, against her power that was ancient, dark and capricious. Just as suddenly as it had arisen the storm subsided and Yuki-onna disappeared into the back the shrine. Zev sprang forward, snapped shut the box that had held the mirror, brought it over to Tony.

With his last thread of energy, and a little bit more stolen from Lee, Tony sealed the box up tight, binding it shut.

And then he fainted.

@@@

Henry and Jack were waiting outside, Jack looking like he'd been dragged through a hedge backwards and Henry looking like a very wet, very pissed off cat. Wordlessly Tony handed the box off to him.

"I see the dybbuk box worked," Henry said, eyeing the hand-carved box minutely. "I wasn't aware they still made these."

"Neither was my rabbi," Zev said. "Fortunately, she's pretty open-minded, and willing to research."

"This," Amy declared, "calls for Benny's. Lee's buying!"

"I am?" Lee said. "I didn't get the blue sheet on that." Tony listed gently into him. "Besides which, Tony? Needs to sleep for a couple of days."

"I'm okay," Tony said, totally disregarding the fact that he was leaning somewhat drunkenly into Lee's side.

"Yeah, sure." Lee rolled his eyes, then started fishing in Tony's pockets for his keys. "Friends don't let friends wizard and drive," he said. "Rain check, okay?"

"I can stay up," Tony said, and he really did feel a bit drunk. He wanted to hug everyone because hey, cool. He was still alive, they were all still alive and they got the job done.

Henry smiled at him, an oddly gentle expression, no Prince of Men or Prince of Darkness in it. "Let Lee take you home, Tony." He turned, nodded to the others then started walking briskly across the lot to his own car, parked in the far corner.

Jack took the keys from Lee and got the door open, and between them they got Tony stuffed into the passenger seat. As an afterthought, Jack fished around in his pockets for a PowerBar. "Here. In lieu of bagels." Amy came up and slid under his arm, and Zev leaned in and gave him a hug, and it was, quite possibly, the _weirdest_ almost-Christmas he'd ever had, but right at this moment? Maybe one of the best.

Halfway home he managed to rouse himself enough to talk. "When I wake up, in a week? You're _so_ going to get lucky," Tony said.

"Yeah, you say that now." Lee reached out, rubbed his arm gently. "I tend to think that I already am," Lee said finally. Tony smiled stupidly, like a big goofy kid, and closed his eyes. Overhead he could feel the worst of the storm clouds moving off, and the snow that fell was small and light and fine.

@@@

End.   
Happy Holidays.

 

 

 


End file.
